Weekend Update, Knitting Style

Had a nice day yesterday. Pan is still not over his "you must pour love into me, more, more" thing, and did a lot of lap-requesting, but cat-cuddling was on my list of things to do, so that worked out pretty well. I also slept in, went to my doctor's appointment, got to the post office, and went to the movies with friends, so that plus lots of lolling about equals quite a good day. Now here I am facing another day of attempting to balance getting things done and relaxing, and we'll see how I do. So far, so good.

I just gave the boys some of the dried catnip from last year's garden, and they're now beating each other up (aggression [and affection, interestingly] are frequent side effects). You'd never think that they usually get along:


On to knitting! I have re-started the slanting stripes scarf that I frogged (or made string, in the excellent words of Amy's son) for its distressing tendency to tube. (I don't seem to have a picture of that, sorry. Take my word for it: not nice.) Adding four stitches of garter to either side has stopped it from curling in, and I started with a few plain rows as well, which also seems to have helped somewhat. I'm still a little bitter about the photo in the book, which has to have been severely doctored, unless the yarn they used made a drastic difference, or was heavily blocked. I should try to let go of this, though, eh? Herewith, the front:


And the back, which charms me almost as much, since instead of stripes I see circles, and how did that happen?


Next, the astute reader might notice that I haven't mentioned the Second Sock in a while. It is actually 99% done.

No, not 100%.

I was kitchnering the toe on the ferry to Nantucket when an errant breeze made a snatch for the pattern, and I instinctively grabbed at it, hugging the knitting to my chest to do so. (Had I been thinking, I would have let the damned pattern go, but as I say, instinct.) The last four stitches came off the needles, and I have to find them again (the stitches, not the needles) to finish the toe. I wasn't going to try this on a heaving boat (it wasn't heaving that much to a normal person, but I'm not so good on boats; I have to be where I can see the motion or my stomach gets rather unhappy with me, which is why I was out where there are breezes, in case you're wondering), so I gently tucked it away. I have had a busy few weeks, and have not felt ready to tackle this since then. It looks sock-like, though, right?


Maybe 99.5%?

Sigh. So close.

Then, I started a square last night for Ms. K's blankets for the miners' family's in Utah, but due to a miscalculation, I have to start over (making a simple 10-inch square is only simple if you can make something close to ten inches). It will be a quick knit, though, once I get closer to size.



The yarn color didn't come close, silly camera. It's a sort of dark plum. We'll try again when we have more to photograph. Hopefully with a ruler showing it's really close to ten inches. I do dream, don't I?

And actually, I have started and finished a project in August, how about that? So fast I didn't photograph it, zoom! But it's very similar to something I made for myself last year, so you can time-travel to see that. I made a shawl for my friend's birthday, like the one I made for myself. There's the in-progress post photo, and the slightly blurry finished shot. It's a nice, light, open-looking piece, and since she liked the one I made myself, I could be pretty sure she would like hers, which she did. Yay! It's nice to be appreciated.

Thus endeth the lesson for today. Except to say, long way to go yet, oh Ravelry:

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